Thursday, June 18, 2009

So you dont want to have any kids? Or maybe just one or two? Fair enough. Good even. But why not? Because you are you, and you just don't want to. Again fair enough, But remember that you, like all of us, are the conclusion to a developmental reaction to your given environment. So then, how do you know that someone did not engineer your environment specifically to ensure that you be the way you are - that is, a person who does not want to have any children? Maybe they have? Speaking in developmental terms again, we are the product of our environment and likewise the product of whoever has control over that environment.

I wouldn't be too quick to assume that social engineers do not understand the human animal, and to the point where they could not master their desired outcomes via environmental controls.

We don't like to think in these terms because we like to believe we are sovereign. But none of us are sovereign to the environment which we grew up in and could never get away from.--------------------------------------------------------------

Immediately after WW2 we had the baby boom within the industrialised Western world. The baby boom was in part a reaction to the prosperity provided by industrialisation moving into mass-production allowing more people to finance large families. Further supporting the boom was a lack of contraception, the social belief that it was best to have large families, and also improved medial care and nutrition which in turn dramatically reduced infant mortality rates.The rational response to the observation of the baby boom--from a far sighted social-engineering viewpoint--should be "population panic". It would be obvious from a macro-scale outlook that the human population of the industrialised world would rapidly explode out of control, and to levels that would eventually be catastrophic. Catastrophic first for the natural environment as it would be progressively reduced to nothing more than a global farm, and then to humanity itself.It would be catastrophic for humanity due to the lack of biodiversity weakening the biosphere of which all life is dependant, and also as an ever-expanding human population would quickly be forced to turn in on itself in competition for food. And indeed, that is exactly what would eventually have happened if the baby boom had not stopped.So here is the question: "Did the baby boom stop on its own accord as a consequence of practical contraception and greater personal security from greater relative wealth, or were the conditions for the termination of the baby boom deliberately induced by some level of governmental (and/or other) intervention?"I do not know, but there is a good case to suggest that the government or some other higher-level social-political force would have intervened. Why? Because it should have intervened. They had nothing less than a population time bomb on their hands, and they surely would have understood that. The ultimate need for active population control would have no doubt been obvious for most social scientists immediately following the baby boom.

If the baby boom stopped from incidental causes, then that is not something that a controlling political force could have anticipated in advance. Indeed, they would have had every reason to believe that the baby boom would probably not stop on its own accord, because all animals, by nature, go through aggressive population growth in response to abundance. Why should humans be any different? All animals are designed to multiply and expand. On top of this, they had a society that was heavily religious, with the catholic church being anti-contraception and pro large families. How do you compete with that in a traditional democracy?

So that is the conspiracy hypothesis: I believe that there is every chance that modern public policy has been fabricated for the purpose of creating conditions conducive to population control, within the developed world in particular. It may have been done deliberately beneath [direct] public awareness because the powers that be would have understood that a democratic majority, at least at the time, would not have accepted direct control (which means compulsory caps on the number of children people can have) if the question were to be openly put to them.

The governmental attitude could easily have been: "This is one argument that we cannot take to the people, because this is one argument that we cannot afford to lose". By keeping quiet about your objectives you can avoid suspicion of which could otherwise too easily lead to political exposure. This can likewise protect your plans. The safest way to win a debate is, basically, to not even have a debate in the first place.So where is the evidence?

Smart Growth policies have the direct effect of making people poor at child rearing age (about 20-40 years) by radically forcing up house prices, often leaving people with financially crippling mortgages within that time of their lives. This makes having children much harder as the individual has less surplus wealth to afford them. High-density living in conjunction with planned social mixing also increases social tensions and makes more of a "human zoo" environment. Animals do not tend to reproduce in bad zoos.

-Increased social dysfunctionality through less personal accountability (reducing the deterrent value of prisons) creating more crime, and greater unemployment through the manipulation of government policy.This also creates more of a "human zoo" effect, and erodes prosperity due to the fallout economic costs.

-The promotion of spurious childcare programmes and new laws which ultimately serve to make having children very hard work and ever more costly.

-Non pro-family indoctrination in schools. i.e. an overwhelming "life is all about careers" message.-Very significantly extended education with now compulsory secondary education, and also the massive expansion of tertiary education. This further erodes wealth (where education investment is not rational in productivity-supporting terms...and most of it is not rational in these terms), particularly for young people at child rearing ages.

-The progressive destruction of universal prosperity with over-regulation, expensive government programmes of questionable social value, the promoted addiction of "false value" material items, and the generation of chronic wealth extremes of which further isolates wealth from young families.

-The aggressive promotion of contraception and the legalisation of abortion.

-The promotion of so-called women's liberation to help drive women into the workforce and likewise encourage them away from their child rearing role.-The promotion of premature sexualisation, which I believe actually achieves the [intended?] opposite in that sex itself becomes de-sexualised.Our version of cultural sexualisation (western world) seems to me to lead to the trivialisation of sex which, in my opinion, damages the human pair-bonding function by effectively promoting promiscuity and likewise the de-personalisation of sex. I believe that much of this promiscuity may have resulted from confusion in many young people's minds as to the natural place of sex, and also social pressures deriving from the promoted idea that casual sex is inherently normal. In turn, the damaged pair-bonding function erodes the family unit by compromising its ability to even evolve in the first place, in a natural way. The final result may be the reduced capacity to experience the desire to have children, as the development of the emotional conditions to (want to) do as such have been undermined.Also note that making a "hook-up" culture by de-stigmatising sex before marriage helps to delay marriage, which in turn helps to delay the beginning of a family and ultimately its size.-The generous investment in social security for pensioners.This mostly eliminates the motive to have children for the sake of being taken care of in old age.-Public policy's [relating to my former observed policy trends] reinforced with the promotion of "political correctness".

Political correctness works as an assault on objectivity, because it encourages people to believe that there are "right" and "wrong" things to believe in, and on primarily emotive (or attitudinal) as opposed to objective grounds. A simple example: The popular term "climate change denier" helps to suppress objective debate on carbon-induced climate change, because if you do not believe that carbon-induced climate change is real (or acceptably validated) then not only are you foolishly wrong, but you are also some kind of Nazi-flavoured dork? i.e. emotional pressure driving people to believe the "right" things on non-objective grounds.

From my outlook, that's what 'political correctness' effectively is, and functionally achieves. In short, political correctness is propaganda. It's about winning an ideological war without objective debate.

....These are just some observations. I'm sure others could be suggested.

Conclusion:

The reason why this is a rational conspiracy theory is because it does actually make sense. You don't have to find a "Mr Bad Guy" in the theory because the baby boom did indeed need to end. And historically it was unlikely to be endable by public consent. In turn it might, quite understandably, have been decided that population control would have had to be indirectly facilitated to stop the baby boom.Personally, I would not be surprised if post WW2 public policy was heavily affected by the single question: "How do we stop the baby boom?".

China is an interesting contrasting example. It shows us how seriously at least one government has responded to the population problem. As China is a dictatorship they do not have to ask, they just dictate. And as we know they have dictated a one-child only policy. Interestingly, they are also going through explosive economic development due to their lack of regulatory constraints [not like what the western world has enforced on itself] and also due to the intensive economic investment in China provided from the western world. Is this their reward for accepting direct population caps? Indirect conditions do not have to be enforced? I for one would not be surprised.I totally agree with the need for population control. Indeed, the need for it is so clear that to me it should not even be open to debate. Debate what? The argument for the otherwise inevitable road to hell on earth?However, using indirect methods, if that is what's really going on, is terribly inefficient and causes a lot of unnecessary grief. I feel that the democratic industrialised world is ready to accept population caps. The sense of it is too clear, and we are, generally, no longer rooted in outrageously irrational religious traditions.

--If we do introduce population caps then they should never have to be less than 2 children per-couple, and for periods of time 3 or even 4 person caps would be acceptable as many people will volunteer for only 1 or even no children. What's more, with modern technology we can further lift caps for a time as our capacity to accommodate more people [in a planet-friendly way] advances. However, the green light for more children should not be given until we can know that we can safely accommodate them. It would be irresponsible to simply guess about our infrastructural and technological capacity. We need to look and plan before we leap, so to speak.--------------------------------------------------------------

Addition: 5-01-11:

Kings and Queens...and cullings?One idea I have heard about is the idea that history's Kings and Queens instigated wars for the sake of culling back their excessive populations. The idea is a curious thought, because as I see it it is at base plausible.Put yourself in a Kings position. You see your subjects breeding and they (inevitably) breed to the point of near over-population, within the relevant geographical area. So what are you going to do? You know obviously enough that if people can't eat then order goes out the window, as people become desperate. And that, in turn, is a direct threat to your kingdom and likewise your privileged position; because your status (and wealth) is ultimately an abstraction, and an abstraction which exists only insofar as your subjects agree that it exists. Desperate people are only too capable of ignoring--and maybe changing--those 'abstract' ideas and rules.

So you need active population control to protect your kingdom. But how? Organising a war is probably the best--and back in time probably only--way to do it. A war is or can be a relatively short-term and 'surgical' way of protecting your kingdom from the fundamental threat of resource-based disintegration.

Is it evil to co-ordinate a war for the sake of controlling your populations? Yes and no; because the alternatives are probably even worse for the [otherwise starving] populations. At least with well co-ordinated national wars you don't have to put up with the never-ending misery that comes from the (otherwise) ongoing inter-tribal wars. You can get the death-phases over and done with quickly.

For all we know population-control programmes may have been going on since the beginning of recorded history. Just a thought!Addition: 13-01-13:

Interesting talk on population control.

It seems there are two central things that need to be (and have been) done: Providing easy access to contraception so that women can make the choice to have less babies, and also creating the conditions that ensure women want to make the choice of having less babies. Driving woman into schooling, and later careers, seems to be central to the latter end. Note woman's liberation (feminism) has been highly instrumental in helping to guide woman away from the traditional (baby making) lifestyle too.

Now all that remains is the dreaded eugenics question. As we control populations we also, unavoidably, control which groups do and do not breed and to what degree. Alas - the eugenics question is affective and unavoidable. You can't have active population control without eugenics.

Education:

If we take it as a given that education is central to population control, then the "strange" changes within education that we have seen in New Zealand (and elsewhere) can be understood in the context of population control.

First appreciate that education, at least for the later years, is only 'signalling' (to use Bryan Caplan's term) insofar as it does not provide for direct vocational training (and most of it doesn't). In short, this means education does not create the mind, but merely tests for it. Or better described; it doesn't form the sculpture - it takes a sculpture that's already formed, runs it through a battery of very expensive and years-long tests, and then slaps a label on it (ready for sale to an employer).

Appreciating this, we can see that removing the old School-Certificate system (where we failed one half of the country just because the other half did better) was one of the worst things New Zealand could have done for educational efficiency; because the old School-Certificate system represented a highly efficient form of 'signalling' through education. The general result:

What we have today is a massively bloated tertiary sector created by huge government subsidies; many more superfluous courses for low ability kids; easy access to "higher" education for students of low academic ability (no longer screened out by School-Cetificate, and other); and even more time/money wasted in even longer tertiary courses for the top-ability students to have to conform to, to prove their natural status. And, students with large student loans.

All of this has been allowed to happen for no true extra educational [human-developmental] return at all.

So, what we have done is mad unless you appreciate it in terms of population control. We've herded an incredible number of women into our education systems, and on top of this we've driven them into often seriously hefty debt. This, among other things, locks them into a dependency on a professional life - a life where it's very hard to have more than just 1 or 2 kids, if that. This is the great value of allowing education to bloat itself out so radically. Was that always the idea?

Also note that education is becoming feminised. In America the curriculum is so anti-boy that many kids have to be drugged (ritalin) to make them conform to it. Does driving boys out of schooling put more pressure on woman to be driven into it ie. having to compensate for the now comparatively redundant male bread winner? You do have to wonder.

Finally, you have to look at the eugenic impact of this kind of (supposed) population control. The brighter kids are having less children. They're the ones diving into years of educational investment, and debt, to become "all that they can be". The lesser intelligent kids are having the larger numbers of children. This suggests we're being slowly dumbed-down as a society. And the fact that we can't even talk about it is also very interesting.

6 comments:

Of course, high immigration levels have more than made up for the dearth of a "native" American baby boom, and the mentality of many newcomers is to crank out large families.

The end of the original baby boom has been made largely irrelevant, until the time when world population pressures decline. Don't expect that to happen anytime soon!

Also, economic growthism, the idea that endless housing-starts and booming retail sales are a good thing, makes businesses keep craving more bodies to fill voids. If they can't get growth from "white" America they'll seek it elsewhere.

Just about everyone in the U.S. works for a business that's banking on continued consumption growth. There are many societal forces (ecologically blind) that encourage baby booms.

True that business craves growth, in particular because the (overall) infrastructure to support growth is established and doesn't want to go anywhere.

If you got rid of population growth then there would be a somewhat painful readjustment away from the status quo. But in the long term, zero population growth should only make us more prosperous in that resources for (volume) expansion are relocated to a quality-based improvements in goods and services, or just more spare time for the common man. At least if able-bodied old people are prepared to pull their weight.

himy name is athanasios baxevanis. i'm from athens, greece.i read some of your blog. i found this issue very interesting and i thought i should send you a couple of videos i found on youtube.com about population control. and not only. check them out if you like.by the way. you are an interesting person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEVv2Sqc1uU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWaV39N3Cfs

you'll find many more related videos on the right column of the web site of youtube as you watch these. mainly on the first video.they have greek subtitles but i believe you can clearly understand english.

-----------------------------------

The video links relate to ideas associated with more extreme conspiracy ideas - going from methods of discouragement for human reproduction, to active sterilisations and even cullings.

Is this real? I don't know, but I do not dismiss it. Going by history tyranny has been the norm, and in many areas of our world psychopaths still reign supreme. I certainly put no blind faith in our existing governments. I can say that from what I have studied, I for one have no intention of getting a flu shot.

Webster Tarpley: I have seen a direct link from this guy before, but wanted something specific to react to. But anyway...

I think he is typical of what Americans call "the patriot movement". He believes population control and eugenics is evil by default, so he preaches the same ideological mantra as others like him. I think he may take his "enemies" out of context, probably because he already "knows" that people who think in supportive terms relating population control are two steps closer to the devil.

It's a shame that a more level-headed discussion about this issue is kept from people. The game comes down to 'Conspiracy theorists V's Officialdom'. Often both are full of it, I believe.

Subscribe To My Podcast

Pages

Andrew Atkin

The Great New Zealand Housing Disaster: Click on The Real Deal, below.

Why would you buy a home for $500k when you can build a new home for $200k at the city fringe? Answer: Because you can't build a home for $200k at the city fringe. Because the cost of land has been artificially inflated, and to the point of ridiculous. This is the heart of the reason why housing in New Zealand has been able to inflate to such extraordinary degrees. The supply response to increases in demand has been deliberately choked off. At base, this so-called complex issue really is that simple.